“My brain is trying to kill me again, I think.” She buried her head in her hands. “I keep remembering trusting my parents when they would quit drinking for a few weeks, believing them that this time would be different and letting myself hope. It’s like a hot stove. I’m trying to fuck up this relationship before it even starts, because I know she could hurt me someday. She’s left before, what will keep her from doing it again? I don’t know how to stop being petrified that this is a bad idea.”

“Aha! That I can help with!” Hannah clapped, because she loved to fix things. “I fell in love, and it was a truly, extraordinarily bad idea.”

“I remember,” Noelle reminded her flatly. “I was there.”

“And I would do it again, in an instant. My love story ended about as catastrophically as it could have without anyone dying, and I would never undo it. I would fall in love with him again, tomorrow.”

“Really?” Noelle asked, shocked. “Damn.” Somehow, of all the things anyone could have said, this was the one that made sense to her. The idea that falling for Miriam could go horrifically wrong but might still be worth it fluttered around inside her, like a bird out of its cage for the first time.

“I think you just have to do the next thing, even though you’re terrified,” Hannah told her.

“Can’t you tell me what the right thing is?” Noelle pleaded.

Hannah shook her head. “What would Cass Carrigan do?”

“I’m currently closed to Cass’s meddling until I’ve forgiven her for lying to us and using her death as a dramatic reveal instead of just reconciling with Miriam like a normal person,” Noelle grumbled.

“Just because you’re mad at her doesn’t mean she was wrong.”

That night, when everyone was long since in bed, Noelle got a text. She woke up to the insistent beeping and glared angrily at her screen.

Miriam: Meet me at the snowmobiles. Dress warmly. Bring skates.

A pond toward the back of the property had been cultivated for many years by Mr. Matthews’s exacting hands and was now a perfect skating spot. They drove guests out to it via snowmobiles they kept stashed in the carriage house.

Noelle thought about letting Miriam go ice skating in the dead of night by herself but decided she was curious and that she needed to keep Miriam from falling through the ice. She wrapped herself in many layers of clothing, then grabbed her ice skates off the rack in the mudroom and headed out.